Welcome to another Evercode Lab weekly crypto news digest!
The second week of August kept the focus on how crypto infrastructure is moving closer to regulated finance (we’ve seen this pattern for a few weeks!). More projects (like Coinbase and Digital Pound Lab) are reaching the point where licensing, real-world distribution and operational reliability matter as much as the technology itself.
Here are the updates worth watching!
Key Takeaways
- Coinbase received Abu Dhabi regulatory approval for custody and investment services connected with tokenized securities, with limits on retail activity.
- The Bank of England is testing how stablecoins and a potential digital pound could work together in cross-border trade finance, but the project remains a simulation.
- A TeraSwitch routing failure temporarily took validators responsible for 28.83% of staked SOL offline, bringing Solana close to its 33.34% finality threshold without halting the network.
- HKDAP moved beyond licensing and testing into limited institutional distribution through Anchorpoint and HashKey Exchange.
- Wintermute plans about $1 billion in high-frequency trading systems and AI data-center infrastructure as it expands beyond crypto.
Coinbase Gets Abu Dhabi Approval for International Tokenization Hub
On August 11, Coinbase announced that it had received Financial Services Permission from Abu Dhabi Global Market’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority. The approval allows its local entity to arrange investment deals and provide custody services connected with tokenized securities. Coinbase will use Abu Dhabi as its international hub for this business.
“As tokenization becomes an increasingly important part of capital markets infrastructure, ADGM remains committed to supporting innovation that enhances market access, transparency and investor confidence, while upholding the highest standards of regulatory oversight,” said Arvind Ramamurthy, Chief Market Development Officer at ADGM.
Securities issued through the structure are backed by underlying shares. Although certain investor rights depend on the terms of each offering
There are also regulatory limits. The ADGM public register says Coinbase’s entity cannot arrange investment deals for retail clients, its retail custody permission is narrowly limited. The approval is therefore an important step for regulated tokenization, but not a general retail launch.
Bank of England Tests Stablecoin and Digital Pound Interoperability
On August 12, CoinDesk reported on a Bank of England initiative examining how stablecoins could work alongside a potential digital pound in cross-border trade finance. One proposed flow would allow an exporter to receive financing through stablecoin infrastructure while a UK importer settles the transaction in digital pounds.
NOBO Finance is working with Dun & Bradstreet on the project, while Polygon provides blockchain infrastructure. The group is also testing a reusable credit profile intended to make financing easier for smaller businesses.
The distinction is important, the Digital Pound Lab is a simulated environment with no real customers or real-money payments. The Bank has also made clear that no decision has been taken to issue a digital pound. The experiment instead tests whether private digital money and central-bank money could operate within the same payment process.
TeraSwitch Outage Pushes Solana Close to Finality Threshold
On August 12, a routing failure at infrastructure provider TeraSwitch temporarily took validators responsible for 28.83% of staked SOL offline. Solana would stop finalizing transactions if delinquent stake reached 33.34%. About 90 validators were affected, leaving the network only several percentage points below that threshold.
TeraSwitch’s autonomous system carried about 118.9 million SOL, equal to 27.34% of network stake at the time. Marinade estimated that 94% of this amount went offline simultaneously. The network did not halt, and validators returned after routing recovered.
TeraSwitch’s incident report traced the outage to a malformed route originating from its Miami infrastructure that spread into its European and Asia-Pacific network. Service was restored after engineers removed the problematic route.
Solana remained operational, but the episode exposed a risk below the blockchain protocol itself. A distributed validator set can still depend heavily on the same connectivity provider. That makes network-provider diversity and working failover systems a big part of blockchain resilience that cannot be overlooked.
Anchorpoint Starts Institutional Rollout of HKDAP
On August 12, Anchorpoint and HashKey Exchange began Beta Access for HKDAP, Anchorpoint’s Hong Kong dollar stablecoin. Eligible institutions and professional investors can now access HKDAP through HashKey, which has joined the project as an authorised distributor. HashKey also completed its first minting and redemption transaction with eligible clients, connecting HKD funds with HKDAP.
The rollout follows several months of regulatory and technical preparation. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority granted Anchorpoint one of Hong Kong’s first two stablecoin issuer licences on April 10. In May, Anchorpoint and OSL completed HKDAP test transfers on Ethereum, with all tokens used in the test later redeemed.
The important change is that HKDAP has moved beyond licensing and testing into limited institutional distribution. Retail access is not available during the beta stage. Anchorpoint says a broader launch, including retail users, is tentatively planned for the beginning of the fourth quarter, subject to operational readiness.
Wintermute Plans $1 Billion Investment to Expand Beyond Crypto
Wintermute plans to invest about $1 billion over five years in high-frequency trading systems and AI data-center infrastructure as it expands beyond crypto. The figure covers both areas rather than an AI-only budget. Wintermute wants non-crypto markets to generate more than 50% of revenue by the end of 2027, compared with about 10% now. Its average daily trading volume has fallen to roughly $10 billion this year from $15 billion in 2025.
The expansion already has a regulatory foundation. On August 6, Wintermute announced that its US affiliate had registered as a broker-dealer with the SEC and became a FINRA member. The registration allows proprietary trading in equities and options, as well as participation in exchange-traded products.
The planned spending therefore looks less like a standalone AI project and more like infrastructure for a broader trading business. Wintermute is preparing to apply technology developed for crypto markets to conventional electronic trading while reducing its dependence on crypto volumes.
That’s a Wrap for This Week
The latest developments show how quickly digital assets are moving into regulated financial infrastructure, although not every project has reached the same stage. Some services are already available to selected institutions, while others remain in testing or early rollout.
Thanks for reading our weekly crypto news roundup!
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